Renascence: A Book of Verse — The Sirens Three LXI - LXXX

LXI

He blindly bore the burden of his day With his dumb kindred of the primal clay, Whence drew his blood brute instincts, fiery lusts, That waste his substance still, and tear and slay.

LXII

A babbling child he sits upon Time’s sand, To the mute sky he cries, he would command;

Heedless he plays with serpents and with fire, With life—a toy in his unconscious hand.

LXIII

Yet hath he held it from that early day, Though Death did ever plot to snatch away, And snared his tottering steps with dangers thick, Prowling in countless shapes beside his way.

LXIV

Sore was the strife, and little was life’s boon Between the toiling sun and wasting moon, With lurid pleasures fierce, and horrid rite, Blind day outworn, the long long sleep won soon.

LXV

Still Nature, prodigal, did cast his seed O’er frozen sea, or burning zone, to breed— Where hand or foot could cling, or heart could beat— Man’s kind on earth, since sprung to flower, or weed.

LXVI

The rod of Want, the school of bitter Need, Taught him Life’s letters, still so hard to read: Use gave him skill, and skill new sense to use, He bent the bow, he bade the ploughshare speed.

LXVII

Bread for his body and his soul he sought, Raiment to cloak him from the cold he bought Of ruthless nature, toiling brain and hand;

Past all the gates of death his race he brought.

LXVIII

Lo!

infant Thought and Art, Man’s children fair, First tottering from the cave, his primal lair;

Babes in the world’s wood wandering, to and fro, To touch man’s sordid heart, and lift his care.

LXIX

Since the first hunter graved his dirk and horn, Or in the shepherd state was music born— When Song lay dreaming in the whispering reed, Ere she discoursed unto the golden morn.

LXX

Born of life’s travail, Virtues, sweet, benign, Grew like fair daughters of a race divine— The pillars of Man’s house, before whose rod Evil and Good, as twisted snakes, untwine.

LXXI

But to his roof had fled pale palsied Fear, The child of Death and Night, but fathered there, And nursed by Ignorance beside the hearth To cloud his house with all her mystic gear.

LXXII

Demon and fetish painted she to scare, And veils against the light did weave and wear;

Yea, Art and Thought, man’s firstlings, fain would bind From birth to serve her will, her yoke to bear.

LXXIII

So Man, held hand and foot, a slave behold Between the soldier-king and priest of old;

By force and fraud bound fast as by two chains— How long, O Man, how long shall they thee hold?

LXXIV

“How long?

” again I cried,—but Silence kept Her finger on the lips of Hope: still slept, Like clouds upon the mountains, dreams untold, And Freedom on the tomb of ages wept.

LXXV

Yet, like a watcher by a beacon fire, Amid the lurid gloom and shadows dire, Wrapped in the cloak of darkness, fold on fold, I marked through flames portentous shapes aspire.

* * * * * LXXVI

Slow streamed the progress vast of human kind, Out of the primal dark I watched it wind, Like a full river gleaming towards the sun, Crested with light, but lost in mists behind.

LXXVII

I saw the towering crests of ancient state Arise and pass, and bow themselves to fate: Captors of men bound still to conquering Time, And in their triumph drawn to death’s dark gate.

LXXVIII

Colossal Egypt on her car rolled by, Dragged by her crowd of slaves, with lash and cry;

Who now, a slave herself, is bought and sold, And buried in the sand her pride doth lie.

LXXIX

Athens, supreme, with burnished helm and spear, In art and arms and wisdom shining clear, To other hands hath passed the lamp of life, And weep the muses o’er her sculptured bier.

LXXX

There, clothed as with a robe with power and pride, Great Rome upon her triumph car did ride Over the necks of nations and of men, Unto whose broken wheel still souls are tied.